Mimi Was refers to our cat, Mimi, who died in 2016 in the midst of a deadly panleukopenia outbreak. This was my first experience with this virus, and I was not prepared for its outcomes. The outbreak swept through Yogyakarta, at a time when pet care was less robust and accessible, and it started for us when one of our cats disappeared and then returned in a state of near-death. I thought he was injured; instead, he was carrying the virus, and for the brief time he was still alive, I unwittingly allowed the virus' exposure to his siblings. Soon after, they all developed fevers. Some died within a day of visiting the vet, others seemed to shrug off the illness and showed barely a sign of it, and a small number fought it bitterly, in visible agony.

Mimi fought for five days. Each day, his suffering increased. He forced himself to eat and drink until he could no longer tolerate it. And then he forced himself to get up and walk around, even as this insidious virus was destroying his insides. On the night he died, he crawled out of his bed and across the room, before finally resting in the corner. I only knew this because of the dry trail of blood that followed his body.

My grief on this day was tinged with anger—at the virus and my failure to help him—but Mimi was not the only cat in our care. I spent the rest of the morning cleaning and disinfecting the room, so I could return the surviving cats to it. One of them, Rocket, can be seen towards the end. While cleaning, most of my mind was occupied with the injustice of a cat as beautiful and friendly as Mimi perishing a mere year into his life, and that a virus this violent in its mechanisms could be allowed to exist. I decided to film myself cleaning not because I wanted to depict these thoughts, but because I wanted to remember what I saw as I was thinking them: I could not replicate the smell, but I should forever be reminded of the pool of blood in Mimi's bed, and the large, dark-crimson stains he left behind on the floor. These reminders of suffering.

By the end of the outbreak, I'd learned my lesson, and the scenes shown here were my catalyst. We've cared for many cats since then, and my heart has been broken more times than I wish to mention, in some cases (frankly), irreparably so. The pain of losing Mimi, and Fennec, and Gothmog, and Trotsky, and Tata, and Foppa, and my favourite cat of all, Rocket, will always linger, as it (again, frankly) should. Sweet memories, after all, need bitter counterparts to balance the palate, and our heartache and memories of it are the machinery through which care is rendered and disease prevented.

Over the past few years, we've successfully meandered through every outbreak largely unscathed (rest in peace, Blob and Puffskein), and while one illness or another is ever-present, the least we can say is that the cats in our care are unreasonably happy. As of yesterday, every cat in our care is fully vaccinated, the last being a scabies-ridden juvenile someone abandoned on our doorstep, who is now completely healthy and extremely satisfied with his current lot in life. Mimi was many things. Sweet, talkative, nurturing, and totally determined to give everything he could to survive a pernicious disease. His corporeal form is gone, but the meaning of his fight lives on.

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This resulting film is a remaster of one originally released in 2016 (still viewable here: https://youtu.be/wpagBnvvwpo), taking advantage of my access to better audiovisual tools. For the full production notes on what's changed, please see here: https://scenoptica/film/mimi-was.html.

Credits:

"Wind blowing in a field in Texas, USA" by felix.blume, https://freesound.org/people/felix.blume/sounds/217506, CC0

"A tree is creaking in the patagonian forest of Argentina in a deep creaky sound. (Argentina, Tierra del Fuego)" by felix.blume, https://freesound.org/people/felix.blume/sounds/140047, CC0

"winter wind 01a.aiff" by klangfabrik, https://freesound.org/people/klangfabrik/sounds/117504, CC0

"Nocturne in E flat major, Op. 9 no. 2" composed by Frédéric Chopin, performed by Aya Higuchi, https://musopen.org/music/108-nocturnes-op-9, public domain

Produced with the support of emptywheel on Patreon.

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